Best World War One Movies

Set in a mental institution where the doctor (Jonathan Pryce) has the dubious duty of patching up shattered soldiers to send them back to the front. Jonny Lee Miller stars, but his fellow soldiers include two famous real-life poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, who tragically immortalized the uselessness of war.

Ernest Hemingway loathed this version of his classic novel, but he did approve of Gary Cooper, here stunningly handsome as an American soldier in Italy who falls for an English nurse (Helen Hayes). Romance takes precedence over the war for both the characters and the filmmakers, which is why it's remembered more as a love story than a great military film.

This anarchic French film about a Scottish soldier (Alan Bates) who finds himself in a town where everyone has left but the inhabitants of the local asylum famously played for five years at one theater, but this comic commentary on the absurdity of war from the age of peace and love isn't for every taste. Critic J. Hoberman called it "the most cloying of cult films" during a 2003 re-release.

The always glorious Philippe Noiret (best known as the projectionist in 'Cinema Paradiso') plays a French major who has the thankless task of identifying the bodies of countless soldiers after the war. A rich Parisian looking for her husband is first a headache, then a revelation for the lonely, bitter man of war.

In 1914, the French, Germans and Scots declare a ceasefire on Christmas Eve for one night of peace amidst the horrors of barbed wire and gas attacks. This Christmas miracle really happened, which makes the the truce's end doubly tragic.

Perhaps it's because this film was made so close to the war itself, or because there's never been such devotion between soldiers-in-arms (as noted in 'The Celluloid Closet'), but this movie is still choking up audiences 80-plus years after it was made.

Hollywood is famous for churning out war propaganda movies and this one, about a heroic World War I sharpshooter who was really a pacifist, certainly fits the bill, especially since America was on the eve of entering World War II. Gary Cooper won a Best Actor Oscar and the film, directed by the great Howard Hawks, received 10 more nominations.

The Battle of Gallipoli doesn't happen until the last 30 minutes of the film, but when it does, it's devastating, because we've grown to love buddies Archy (Mark Lee) and Frank (a young and swooningly handsome Mel Gibson, on the verge of superstardom.) The movie put Australian Cinema on the map and Hollywood soon poached director Peter Weir as well as Gibson.

If you thought Errol Flynn was only good at laughing in the face of danger as Robin Hood and various pirates, think again. Here he plays a conflicted squadron leader who must send unprepared pilots to their death. The amazing cast includes Basil Rathbone, and David Niven. The very non-CGI aerial footage was likely recycled from the 1930 original version, but is still breathtakingly real.

This bitter, searing drama marks one of Kirk Douglas's finest hours and a stunning achievement for the then 29-year-old Stanley Kubrick. A French general makes a disastrous call, then orders the execution of his own troops as scapegoats. The bitter futility of the war and the insane abuse of power by the upper-class officers was never more hauntingly portrayed.

Still one of the most powerful anti-war films ever made. The story of a young German soldier (Lew Ayres) who loses his idealism in the brutal trenches never fails to leave its audience in tears. The acting is surprisingly naturalistic and the violence surprisingly graphic for the era, all of which give the film its undeniable, unchanging impact.

A captured French officer (Pierrre Fresnay) finds he has more in common with the German commandant of a prison camp (the unforgettable Erich von Stroheim) than with his working-class fellow countrymen. This masterpiece from Jean Renoir about class and honor is both heartbreaking and hopeful. Simply one of the greatest films ever made.